MediaDefender’s Decoy Effectiveness on BitTorrent Sites

Written by Ernesto on September 22, 2007 

MediaDefender’s email and anti piracy tool leaks gave the world a unique insight into the workings and the effectiveness of their BitTorrent decoy operations. So how effective were they? And which sites were best protected against these fake torrents? Let’s find out.

MediaDefender's Decoy Effectiveness on BitTorrent SitesMediaDefender determines the effectiveness of their spoofs and decoys by analyzing the top search results for the file in question, mostly movies and music albums. If 2 out of 10 top search results are fake files spread by them, their effectiveness is 20% on that particular BitTorrent site. Their goals is of course to get as many fake files in there, hoping people will end up downloading useless data.

There is a lot of variance in the reported effectiveness between BitTorrent sites and the different decoy projects. We scanned through most of the reports and it seems that The Pirate Bay and Mininova were best protected against fake files whereas MediaDefender was more effective on sites like BiteNova and TorrentPortal.

Niek from Mininova, the toughest site to get onto according to MediaDefender, wrote a blog post in response to the leaked MediaDefender emails. He sums up some of the quotes that show how well protected Mininova is. Niek adds, “We can only be grateful for the many nice words from our friends at MediaDefender. All thanks go to our great moderating team, who did (and do) great work.”

The Pirate Bay has always been one of MediaDefender’s main targets because this site is often mentioned in the press. Unfortunately for MediaDefender The Pirate Bay is also one of the sites that is well protected against fake files.

In July, Brokep from The Pirate Bay already told us that they were doing all they can to block Media Defender from accessing their trackers. “We block them and some other torrent sites do as well.” he said.

This apparently annoyed MediaDefender, as we can see from one of their emails regarding the effectiveness of their decoys for Micheal Moore’s Sicko: “we still have no presence on Pirate bay which is a site they [Weinstein?] are likely watching as it was mentioned in the AdAge article they referenced.”

Here is an example of an effectiveness report for “Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer” based on the top search results. Note that an effectiveness of 100% means that all the torrents that showed up in the search results (top 6/10/15) were fake.

BiteNova: 100%
Bittorrent.am 27%
Btjunkie 20%
Btmon 15%
BushTorrent 100%
ExtraTorrent 47%
Fenopy 100%
FlixFlux 23%
FullDLS 32%
IsoHunt 100%
Meganova 100%
Mininova 0%
Monova 35%
MyBittorrent 91%
NewTorrents 0%
Novatina 98%
PirateBay 0%
Snarf-it 74%
TorrentBox 32%
TorrentLocomotive 47%
TorrentPortal 100%
TorrentReactor 0%
TorrentSpy 4%
TorrentValley 77%
TorrentView 27%
Torrentz 22%
Underground 0%
WorldNova 97%
Yotoshi 92%

Previously: PirateBay Fires a Broadside of Complaints to Police

Next: Porn Industry Infighting As Pirate Bay Takes On Big Media

55 Responses

Pages: [1] 2 3 » Show All

1 Sep 22, 2007 at 19:55 by Noby

Any word why MD-D’s irc channel is down?

2 Sep 22, 2007 at 20:20 by Cartman

it’s not

3 Sep 22, 2007 at 20:33 by Capmaster

Are any of these private trackers?

4 Sep 22, 2007 at 20:37 by The entire P2P community is speaking in this one message

[wuote]Are any of these private trackers?[/wuote]

No; They’re not even all trackers, some are just index sites.

5 Sep 22, 2007 at 20:38 by ScarT

#1 IRC works fine. I am on it right now.

6 Sep 22, 2007 at 20:38 by The entire P2P community is speaking in this one message

Wuote? Oh, you mean Quote? Yes, I do, thanks for noticing. No problem man.Ok, bye. Bye.

7 Sep 22, 2007 at 22:03 by l0gikal

How do I see the archived comments in the original blog post about MD? It says 212 comments, but I can only see 108??

8 Sep 22, 2007 at 22:43 by Noby

The server I used was down, switched to another and could access the channel.

Sorry for the disturbance.

9 Sep 22, 2007 at 22:44 by h33t

on topic:

bittorrent is self-verifying if downloaders leave comments and the index is moderated

torrent moderation really makes the difference. in their rush to get big many sites lost it

10 Sep 22, 2007 at 23:57 by Angel

Demoioid not even mentioned? Wow! I’m offended! :-)

11 Sep 23, 2007 at 00:05 by sense

Keep in mind that TPB and mininova both order search results by date added instead of high seeds, which is why they effectively pass the mediadefender ranks.

12 Sep 23, 2007 at 00:31 by aodm

i wonder if the asstunnels are reading this.

hi media defender! post some more emails. i need another good laugh.

so whats it like to be so totally screwed? tell us. we’re intrested.

13 Sep 23, 2007 at 01:42 by Asstunnel #1 (That CEO Dude?! Or the Dr Octapus guy? WHO AM I!?!)

[quote]i wonder if the asstunnels are reading this.[/quote]

Yep, we’re here :D Oh, wait, that’s wrong… We’re very sad :( But we’re still here :(

We’re sad because we did bad things to fight against freedom but for corporate profit. And now we got punished.

14 Sep 23, 2007 at 01:44 by %20

I’m interested in collecting these spoofing files, anyone have any tips on what to look for? anyone got any and want to share?

15 Sep 23, 2007 at 02:41 by Yatti

[quote comment="171076"]I’m interested in collecting these spoofing files, anyone have any tips on what to look for? anyone got any and want to share?[/quote]

They are out there… You’ll get an “eye” for them eventually.. MediaDefender can suck my *** **** since im in Canada anyways…

16 Sep 23, 2007 at 03:13 by Jimbo

[quote comment="171107"][quote comment="171076"]I’m interested in collecting these spoofing files, anyone have any tips on what to look for? anyone got any and want to share?[/quote]

They are out there… You’ll get an “eye” for them eventually.. MediaDefender can suck my *** **** since im in Canada anyways…[/quote]

Yes…. the MediaDefender files should be left on all bittorrent sites and COLORED RED with a frowney MD face next to it…LOL@Asstunnels

17 Sep 23, 2007 at 04:03 by WASD

who is that butt ugly people in the pic??

18 Sep 23, 2007 at 04:19 by Name

Ah, the existing business model for film and TV is so fucked. Can’t wait till the smoke has cleared. The RIAA and MPA think piracy is going to kill the entertainment industry. But film and music will still be made - and whatever is produced under the future models could hardly be worse than the crap being made right now.

19 Sep 23, 2007 at 04:35 by Dan

I wonder what percentage of all torrent data is fake. An moreso, how pissed off comcast is that media defender is intentionally clogging their tubes.

20 Sep 23, 2007 at 04:54 by Demonnnn

how about ole demonoid? any word on them?

21 Sep 23, 2007 at 05:22 by The Profit

i have one word to say……

“Karma”

look it up you capitalistic **** **** ******** ****** ******* ******** ********** ****** bastards.
Go **** yourselves.

Long live P2P! A freedom that will not be silenced.

22 Sep 23, 2007 at 07:12 by dripsta23

demonoid is the safest and then mininova!!!!

23 Sep 23, 2007 at 07:19 by people

hum weird bushtorrent & torrentreactor are actually the same torrent DB why is it 100% effective on 1 but not the other?? Also yotoshi is a search engine it doesnt even have torrents does it?

Pages: [1] 2 3 » Show All

Responses are closed

All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.